so long story short, ive been tasked with creating a WP theme (kinda simple) but, one of the areas, around footer area, has a few things they want, like a 2ndary menu/ bread crumbs etc...maybe even custom html box etc that i can do other things with later on, which i know WP provides via plugins / widgets etc but, my question is

how can i make a custom area to "hook" these onto a specific area of a page?

for example, in joomla, i can mark any part of a page with named hooks and thereafter,
select whatever module i want to work with, assign said widget to the area by name and thats it, style it there after.

Does wordpress have anything like this?i know theyre different platforms but is there anything like it or a wordpress equivalent to achieve this.

i see for example that most of the widgets etc, go into the wp_sidebar.
can i make my own area or are there other hooks that simulate what i described above?

Any tips/answers, links to read/research i gladly and humbly appreciate.

+1 For remembering the %2$s in the before_widget. I added the id also. Theme developers: Always let the Widget set the ID and class attributes!
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Stephen HarrisApr 18 '12 at 14:08

Hello, thanks for your informative reply. ive done as you said and all worked as it should, it appeared in the widgets area BUT, i cant see anything. any widgets i add to the module if you will, doesnt show on the page. when i do a quick test on Firebug to search for it, it doesnt appear in the code either so its not coming through at all. Any ideas? thanks again
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somdowApr 19 '12 at 0:15

I just tested the code and it seems to be working as it is supposed to. Give me the URL and I will take a look at it.
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Travis PflanzApr 19 '12 at 0:37

ahh man its not online, im running it on WAMP/MAMP here at the house. What do you think it could be? when i Firebug the page (i added a text widget and added dummy words ) and i look for it on the code, they dont come up, which lets me know theyre not coming through. any ideas? Thanks
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somdowApr 19 '12 at 0:40

Hey original poster, long story short, i edited my code(based on yours) and added this to the top of it " if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) " and it worked. Edit your reply so i can mark it. Thanks
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somdowApr 19 '12 at 0:58

This doesn't answer all of your questions, but when I was learning the widgets it was hard for me to find a good reliable sample to learn from. So here's the one I used as reference to wrap my head around the enigma so to speak ;)